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I am busy building instruments, developing the Sound of ORE and finishing off building my recording studio. All exciting stuff but it doesn’t leave much time for blogging at present…
As my first blog post of the New Year I decided to pull my finger out and blog about something I attended in December 2011. I was asked by my friends at The Centrifuge to conduct an electronics workshop, building my Noise Boxes, in Helsingor, Denmark. This was the venue (Photographs by Quintin Lake). How could I refuse?
The workshops I conduct provide an opportunity for me to share my skills, in the hope that others might be inspired (at the very least) to “hack things better”, rather than accept that all electronic devices are untouchable. They also provide a great opportunity for meeting interesting people and engaging in some deep and worthwhile discussions. To then get my expenses and my time paid, have amazing food, drinks and accommodation provided, and be treated with the utmost courtesy, made my time in Denmark really remarkable. It was quite clear how much value they attach to the arts, based not only on the venue we were at but the future plans and the general approach. It warmed my heart!
The workshop went really well. My mini lecture went well too. Much fun was had. Everyone was charming, relaxed and professional. The Centrifuge crew delivered.
I’d like UK arts organisations to take note. If you treat us well we will reciprocate. Expect us to deliver many hours of our time at a loss, with a load of stress-heads beating us up about the whole thing and you get what you deserve.
That is all.
BIG thanks to The Culture Yard and The Centrifuge for making this happen.
In a couple of days I’ll be seeing my nephew, Roy. He’s only little. Everyone is very pleased to have him around as he nearly didn’t make it into this world.
So, I thought I’d get him something a bit different for Crimbo. Off I went yesterday in search of some sort of weird toy to bastardise. My plan was to make it really scary (LED eyes and stuff) but I think what I found is scary enough – a talking pig with a torch in his mouth!
BUT all the pig did was some silly grunting. Not anymore – see below!
AND I included the recorder inside so his parents can change the message as they wish. Such fun!
I can’t deny being rather tempted to record some filth on it and put it back on the shelf…bad Sam.
Supersonic Noise Box – Dual oscillator optical synthersizer
I was recently commissioned by VIVID and Capsule to produce and install eight pieces of Sonic Graffiti in Digbeth, Birmingham. These are sound objects, embedded in the built environment. The commission was split between four pieces that featured the “Crash EP” of music inspired by field recordings taken in the area and four others which were more “playable”.
I have created such sound objects in the past. I’ve always just left them in random places, often while away on holiday etc. For example, you might visit the toilet in a library and find a small voice recorder that encourages you innocently to “Leave a nice message for the next person”. They were always transient in nature, lasting only until the battery ran out, or until someone vandalised or stole them. I never really cared whether anyone ever found them.
This was different though. Firstly, there needed to be based on more than “it’s a laugh”. Secondly, they needed to be more engaging and interactive. Lastly, they needed to be more durable.
What follows is the story of how these came about, the successes, the failings, and the people I met along the way…
Initially, this idea was pitched to a different arts organisation locally. It was (only just) unsuccessful but ultimately this process was very helpful in me developing the idea from the throw-away level it was initially. In completing this pitch I decided that my ideas and standing alone might not cut the mustard so I contacted Nikki Pugh. Nikki had already expressed some interest in the idea and moreover she’s bloody brilliant! I took over a very rough outline and then we sat in her flat chatting for a couple of hours. She added more to the project in that short time than I had in hours of aimless pondering. Partly this was the power of discussing stuff but mainly it was the power of Nikki. The thing Nikki does well is adds ideas that are grounded on some reasoning, dare I say some artistic justification, which is not something I excel at. As the project didn’t go ahead through this initial pitch, and as Nikki was in New York for a while, we never got to work on it together…but my thanks go out to her for her influence on the project!
When VIVID were looking for artists for their exhibition Crash, it seemed immediately obvious to me that Sonic Graffiti could be a good fit. In fact that had already crossed their minds, so I developed the idea further to angle it towards Crash better and I was commissioned to complete the piece. Capsule played a huge part in securing this for me too. I have been really lucky to enjoy support from Capsule throughout my sabbatical. They made the initial link between myself and VIVID for this project and they also co-commissioned the piece, so that it included the four extra, more playful, pieces.
By this point, what we were looking at was four pieces featuring music inspired by and based around field recordings made in Digbeth, and four synths / noise boxes that could be triggered / played by individuals or groups of people. I only really had a hunch that much of what I had proposed could be achieved. I don’t know if this is how most people work but it sure keeps the excitement (stress) levels up!
Sonic Graffiti is GO!
So, the first requirement was some expert advice. I had some wacky idea of potentially getting some custom players built by Sonodrome. They are a clever bunch, so I gave them a call to discuss the project. Jim from Sonodrome was very helpful, as ever. He reminded me of the golden rule for hackers: don’t re-invent the wheel! He suggested I buy some cheap bits off Ebay and get inside them to see if they do what I want. This is exactly what I did and stuff built from there.
So, I was dabbling with cheap mp3 players, DIY headphone switching, circuit diagrams for touch switches etc. Things were going ok BUT there came a point where I again found myself in need of some assistance. I was starting to worry that my bodging might not result in the most reliable outcome. Enter David Morton!
I had met David through Twitter a short while ago and I proposed the idea of him helping me by teaching me more about electronics. This resulted in an epic and thoroughly enjoyable 2hr telephone call, through which I realised that David was not some young synth-head but in fact an aging electronics guru. An ex-BBC research engineer, you know, a proper geek. Someone with some real skills and luckily someone of a charitable nature who was willing to help out for the hell of it. Suddenly things got serious! David set about reworking a number of the bits I had bodged, including the switched headphone socket, which he feared could do damage to some very expensive headphones. David is also a damn good recording studio tech and he helped us with our ORE micing issues, but that’s another story.
After LOTS of twatting around (technical term), soldering and crucially water-proofing, I finally arrived at my final set of eight Sonic Graffiti pieces. Each one had a distinctive approach in terms of the installation, what was required to make it work, how sound was emitted etc.
All 8 Sonic Graffiti pieces
Installation
The installation day was manic. I was well prepared but there were lots of unknowns. I was more confident of my electronics than I was of my ability to mortar stuff in place or scale massive hoardings.
I got off to a bad start by setting up my ladder right in front of a nearby police car. They clearly thought I was inept rather than a threat. Actually, I had cleared the project with the police as I wasn’t keen to be responsible for closing all of Digbeth due to my scaling of walls with a rucksack full of electronic devices.
Below are some pictures of the installed pieces.
Supersonic Noise Box – Dual oscillator optical synthersizer
Crash EP – Mudguard
Crash EP – Floodgate
Crash EP – Taxi
Crash EP – Skaters
Play / Record – message recorder
Supersonic Noise Box – Single oscillator optical synthersizer
Touch synth – Pressure sensitive synth, for 3 people joining hands
Tours
As part of this project I gave a number of short walking tours, through which I highlighted two main pieces. In fact, we walked past 5 pieces in total but it was my aim to make people work for their sonic art ;)
These tours took place on the Crash exhibition launch night and as part of Supersonic Festival. After the tours some images immerged of people enjoying the optical synth in a wall and the touch-sensitive audio player in the hoarding. Thanks to Callie for these!
BIG stretch
Joining hands
Wooooooooo
Playing
More playing
Response
Overall, I think my Sonic Graffiti project was well received. Aside from various positive comments, it gained favourable coverage on local arts blogs etc. I was also pleased that the BBC Culture Show chose to feature it as one of their things of note in Birmingham.
I’ve popped recordings of this and the full piece on Birmingham on the Sonic Graffiti micro-site. Thanks to David Morton, again, for capturing these.
Maintenance
This was new to me. For once I had to take care of my creations. Two of the eight pieces were “allowed to fail” but the other six had to be maintained. As it happens, even the one that had water run through it each time it rained managed to last for four weeks!
Due to a surprisingly robust design and build, maintenance was really just a case of going round each of the pieces and administering minimal roadside tweaks as appropriate. Some badges to indicate where the pieces were needed to be replaced and one vandalised piece needed a bit more attention but overall the burden of maintenance was smaller than predicted.
Uninstall
This too was easier than predicted. Yes, it involved some clambering over stuff and some hacking out with the wrong tools but it was over in a flash. The crucial thing now it so assess what’s left , what failed and what can be improved for next time.
Removal of sonic brick
More jumping of fences
What’s next?
So, that was my first formally commissioned Sonic Graffiti project. It went really well but I find myself genuinely torn as to where to take it next. Part of me wants to reclaim it as a bit of fun, transient in nature and low maintenance, whereas part of me wants to build on the success of this project and make some really impressive pieces on a bigger scale. The likelihood is that I will go back to popping small pieces of Sonic Graffiti in toilets countrywide, whilst also working on developing technologies for scaling this project up. Either way, I will be doing more of this!
Lastly
As part of checking the pieces each week to see whether they still worked I would see if anyone had recorded a message on the (very hard to find) “Play / Record” piece. Every time I was disappointed. That is until I came to remove it, when I found this message on it.
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P.S. *whispers* I’ve left one piece of Sonic Graffiti in place to see how long it lasts. So far so good!
A while back I blogged about my visit to the Liminal project called “Organ of Corti”. Recently, Lesley Goss who introduces a programme called “Take Note” on Soundart Radio got in touch to ask whether she could use my recordings of The Organ of Corti in her show on it.
It was a bit late in the day to be asking and I didn’t respond immediately, so my recordings were never used. However, Lesley kindly sent me a recording of the programme to host here. If you want more information on the Organ of Corti and Liminal, this is a good place to start.
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I love the feeling of this programme. It’s cosy, like being in your grandma’s kitchen for a chat.
Lastly, if you are not aware of Soundart Radio, I would highly recommend it! It’s a rich source of interesting programmes on a variety of subjects. Go listen!
This is my third year of attending Supersonic Festival. Each of those years I have had the pleasure of performing and completing my wonky diary / review following the event (2009 / 2010).
Last week I attended the UK leg of the PRSF New Music Incubator, for which I was selected earlier this year. This was held at Brunel University, the Swedish leg takes place in some remote northern Swedish town in April 2012.
Here is a list of the current participants.
I decided to write an initial response to my time there before memories fade. I have not reflected on stuff in great detail, in fact I just wanted to blurt some stuff out there. I find this a valid part of how I document stuff and also quite cathartic. More measured thoughts to follow…maybe.
The schedule and process was pretty intensive. Each day we’d make our way to the food hall at 8am for breakfast, then to the main hall for 9am to be divided into groups and to be given our theme for the day. Each evening at 8pm we would “perform” whatever we had managed to achieve that day. Days were pretty long, creatively charged and were followed by long sessions to evaluate what had been presented. These were sometimes quite impassioned affairs.
On the first night it became apparent that the people chosen were all really pleasant, as were the people leading the programme. That was a great start and put me immediately at ease.
For me personally it was an emotional time. I had to travel back on the first day to attend a meeting to see whether the studio I had spent all my life savings on having built could be rescued from possible demolition, as it was too tall. I find planning a pretty dull subject area but the potential consequences were substantial for me and had been causing me stress and bouts of depression for months. I was really nervous but I am so pleased to say that it was passed and can now be finished. This is GREAT news but the whole episode left me even more emotionally drained than just the intensity of the programme itself. My instinct was that I wanted to be around people I was already close to that night and the next day but it was actually really nice just getting on with stuff and seeing how happy those who I told were for me. Again, it showed how damn pleasant the people on the programme are.
At times I felt out of my depth. I am clearly at a different stage in my musical development to pretty much everyone else there, which included accomplished composers, players, or experts in their fields. By the last day this feeling got to me a little but overall it was really good to be given an indication of what level I should be looking to achieve. It also meant that I learnt shedloads from everyone else. I hope I was able to give something back but some of the time I just felt I was leaching expertise.
I was reminded how much I want to excel on an instrument or in a given area, rather than as is currently the case, where I am fairly proficient in a number of areas. People demonstrated some amazing work throughout as part of how we got to know each other. On the last day I had demos from Robert Ek, a hugely accomplished clarinet player, and from Mark Fell. I consider both of them to be at the top of their games. This just made me want to concentrate my efforts more than ever.
As ever I didn’t document stuff as well as I’d have liked. We were busy! The best I did was take a few photographs of my group on the last day (below). More material will no doubt surface in due course.
Lina Lapelyte
Robert Ek
Mark Fell
My kit
We all provided feedback about the programme on the last evening. There’s no need to go over that here, other than to stress one thing, I think it could be even more successful given a broader range of people and influences. I don’t really know what sort of music PRS hope the programme will result in but for me the participants were drawn from too narrow a selection of musicians and backgrounds.
I have not stopped thinking about the week we had together. In the shower, on my morning bike ride etc. It has really challenged me and I believe it will focus my efforts greatly. In particular the single-mindedness and expertise demonstrated was just a big kick up the arse for me. I admire so many of the people on the course, it was great to spend time I their company. It was all I could’ve hoped for.
I am really looking forward to Sweden and am confident interesting collaborations and future works will arise.
I’d like to thank everyone involved in the programme and a special thank you to Capsule for nominating me. Your support is hugely appreciated!
As part of the Worcester Music Festival I was lucky enough to visit Organ of Corti last weekend, a project by Liminal. I also attended the “Meet The Artists” event on the previous day.
I became aware of this project some time ago and was chuffed, to say the least, when I realised it would be visiting Worcester. It transpires that Diglis weir was actually the place initially chosen to sight it. A real bonus for me as it gets a little tedious when so much intriguing stuff of this nature requires an all-day round trip (at best) to witness it. The weir is only a bike ride away.
The presentation on the Friday night gave a really fascinating insight into the project. Rather than me trying to go into much detail about what was covered, check out the Organ of Corti page for an overview. Based on what we heard and saw, in terms of the science, images of the piece and the enthusiasm of the artists, I was keen to experience the piece myself.
Before I come back to that though, David Prior of Liminal mentioned a project by one of his former students, which I had to mention, as it’s a real gem. He took four drummers, each playing snare drums, and spaced them along a path into the distance. He then conducted them with a semaphore flag from next to where the audience stood. Each player hit their drum simultaneously but given the (carefully measured) space between them and the time it took for the sound of each drum to reach the audience, a recognisable rhythm was created. The players then walked to the next designated spot. As they did so, the rhythm got jumbled. On reaching the next spot another recognisable rhythm was formed. The players ultimately ended up by the crowd, still playing in unison. Great idea that! Anyway, I digress…
On the Saturday I visited the piece by the weir. It is a stunningly beautiful object. I read the description and instructions and tried my best to get myself into listening mode. If anything I generally listen to stuff too closely. For example, I’ll get distracted from a fascinating interview by a squeaky shoe. I gathered myself, listened deeply and entered. The first thing that struck me was a shift in where I perceived the sound to be coming from. All of a sudden it seemed to have shifted to emanate from the piece itself, directly in front of where I stood. This was something I hadn’t expected.
I passed from right to left listening to the distinction between different parts of the “sonic crystal”. I could definitely distinguish changes in the frequencies of sound I was hearing. The weir was chosen as the site due to the wide frequency range it produces, in an effort to highlight the effect.
I did some sound recordings to try to illustrate what it sounded like. The first is from outside the Organ of Corti, the second from just inside, and the third is a “fly-through”. They were all somewhat compromised by a mixture of me forgetting my wind sock, not having whatever the audio equivalent of a steady cam is and by people talking and making sounds…but I think it illustrates the effect to some degree.
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Note: these are quite noisy!
I must admit I was left wondering how different it would’ve been if I’d walked behind / into something else. The animation we saw on the Friday evening suggested that the specific form of the piece was vital to the effect. I can’t say that my ear is well trained enough to be confident of this. I understand this version of the piece is due to be used as a research tool for a period now. I’d be fascinated to hear what comes of this.
It’s great to see such projects in Worcester. I hope this piece and pieces like it are given a permanent home here. Only the other day, on seeing a photograph of the Worcester skyline including the new Worcester University Library & History Centre, I remarked that it’s stuff like this which makes for a truly international city. The same applies to the quality of the art that resides in the city. More please!
Yesterday saw me hop on a train and head up to sunny Scarborough to perform at the fabulous HANDS OFF! 2011 Theremin Symposium. I am now back home and settled again, and wanted to tell you a bit about it.
First up was an evening of outdoor Theremin dabbling, recording of the “Theremin Hellos”, where each performer recorded a ditty to say hello to the festival, drinking, eating, chatting and my performance of Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music for torches and Optical Theremins.
The setting was amazing. We took up the space inside and outside the café on top of Oliver’s Mount. The view and sunset were fabulous. This really got everyone in the right frame of mind and provided some great photo opportunities.
Anthony Springall, event organiser
Soon, after a couple of pints of the specially prepared Theremin ale (apparently the pump on the first night operated like a Theremin when you pulled it!), it was time for my performance. I set up my rig, asked for four volunteers to perform and away we went. There is probably more footage to come in due course but John Allsopp made a nice recording of it, which is below (thanks!). It includes a lot of waffle from me at the start, which might be worth listening to if you don’t know the piece already…
Note: there were a couple of sound system / lead issues which caused some crackling and volume fluctation. Sorry.
A special thank you to Valentin Ganin (and Kate Sugden) from Aston University who very kindly helped to design and build these new optical Theremins. They were specially made for this event, just in time, because they produce a nice sine wave, which is more akin to a real Theremin than my old square wave mk1s. They made for a much more subtle piece, which I thought fitted well in the context of this event. THANKS!
Afterwards, there was much pub and club banter, with a right-on bunch of “outsiders”.
Today was about Theremin lessons. I had booked mine with Lydia Kavina. I wanted to meet her more formally to discuss one of my favourite albums with her, which she performed on, Messer Chups “Crazy Price”. First though, my lesson, which I am told went very well. It was great fun to play but rather like scratching your head and patting your tummy at the same time, or whichever way round you are meant to do it.
We chatted about Messer Chups. We chatted about my Glatze EP and I gave Lydia a copy. We got on well. That’s nice when it’s someone you admire so greatly. Oh, and her playing was divine. I sat in on another lesson afterwards and she played a couple of classical Theremin pieces. Amazing accuracy and such feel. I was frankly awestruck! This was the the piece she played…
Time for some lunch and a big goodbye to all the lovely people at the festival, and off I went, or so I thought…
Before I could leave I was interviewed by the charming chaps that had volunteered to shoot a documentary about the whole event. I’m going to look like a right fan boy (which basically I am) as I was wearing my Supersonic t-shirt and my Home of Metal badge – hehe.
Homeward bound! I travelled by train too, which meant my journeys were productive. I wrote some process pieces of my own that I am really happy with and dabbled with making some new Reaktor instruments. Nice!
A thoroughly pleasant and inspirational trip away. Thanks to all involved for inviting me and bringing this great event together!
Finally, a few more photographs…
(Scary) Gordon Charlton, event organiser
Lydia Kavina, Barbara Buchholz and Carolina Eyck
A drunken novice, spinning out ;)
I am enjoying concentrating on my non-commercial music and arts projects during my sabbatical but when I was offered the chance to do a funky little ditty for this Hobbycraft campaign, with my business partner at Stereographic doing the visuals, I went for it! It was great just concetrating on creating a little tune and not having to deal with any other aspects of the project ;)
Note: not sure why the audio is a little “clicky” in parts…
